In an op-ed published in The Huffington Post on May 5, Harvard Law School professor Alan M. Dershowitz assessed the decision made by the Obama administration not to release photographs of Osama bin Laden’s dead body for public scrutiny.
According to Dershowitz, the decision to withhold the photographs was “only the last in a series of terrible mistakes” the president made following the operation. Dershowitz asserts: “bin Laden’s body should have been preserved as long as necessary to gather all relevant evidence, notwithstanding the requirements of Sharia Law. When a Muslim or a Jew is the victim of a homicide in the United States, religious considerations do not trump civil requirements. …”
Dershowitz also debated the issue with New York Times writer Nicholas Kristof and Colonel Morris David, former chief prosecutor at Guantanamo, on CNN’s Piers Tonight.
Dershowitz is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at HLS. He is the author of several books, including “The Case for Moral Clarity: Israel, Hamas and Gaza” (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America 2009).